2020 Review

Can’t wait for 2020 to be over and to embrace 2021. Never had this year-end feeling before. While we all wish we will never live another year like 2020 again, it’s clear that many things in 2020 will never come back regardless. That’s urged me to write an annual review to record my year 2020.

A FB quote gets me. Not the exact words but it goes like this, if you are blaming your job in 2020, think about many people who have lost their jobs; if you find yourself falling down a rabbit hole, think about many people who are struggling to get out of the hospital; if you swear that 2020 is too slow, think about many people couldn’t see the New Year’s Eve fireworks.

I am still grateful for so many things, if not more. A quick reflection, “Stuck on the road”, pretty much sums my gratitude: the tough time will be over, the joy will come, doubled.

Work

Whole year working at an Amazon sorting station — a true rock bottom. I see no less, however, about the business insights of this country, and certainly, clearer. I am grateful that I have a duty to anchor myself in this turbulent time. It is way more worthy than a paycheck. While hearing a lot of complaints about the working condition, I never felt the work physically challenging. Challenges come from many other aspects. The biggest one for me is the cultural shock, the business culture. Interestingly, the people culture, at a southern Californian warehouse, has almost nothing to do with the American culture. It’s so Mexican. Or it’s all about the American culture which is so diverse — yet another big shock.

I learned more about why American manufacturers had moved out — warehousing is certainly part of a production chain and labor-intensive. The cost control concepts are light-year apart between Asia and the U.S. I realized that my decades of production experience in Asia wouldn’t help me to build my career in this country. I must dump it, in and out, and start from zero. It’s painful to do it at this age but better late than never.

In general, I respect Amazon’s overwhelming dedication to safety, especially in pandemic times. It acts way more promptly and professionally than any other public place that I enter, like supermarkets, restaurants, even hospitals (during my two weeks of hospital staying for my wife’s surgery). It’s implemented over 150 process changes in the building to prevent the virus. Unfortunately, we still received notices of infection cases in the building but it was never closed. It sounds crazy but I have nothing but pride and appreciation. Only through a crisis like this wild pandemic can we see that Amazon is a company with responsibility and determination, and of course, a seemingly bottomless pocket. The almost suffocating Covid protocols and ghastly yells of “Six Feet!” everywhere in the building give me a weird sense of safety. I even had the impulse to come to work in the worst lockdown. Thankfully, it’s immensely helped me fight the Covid fear and work anger.

The Covid and its impact will be over, but the culture shock will stay for a long time. I am still struggling to digest the sense of “political correct” at the workplace. It uses cutting-edge digital techs at every inch of the workplace that can easily collect the working data and make employee assessments. But it avoids making judgments on individual workers per productivity. It only gets serious about safety and attendance. Workers of high skills and productivity have the same pay as those of low. You only get extra income by taking volunteer extra working time. This is unthinkable in a Chinese production line especially when the outcome can be easily counted per worker. It’s something called “employee commoditization”, trying to erase the nuance related to the physical status of the employees. I was confused in the beginning, then I hated it, now I try to accept it. By ignoring the individual characters, it tries to generate a maximized average respect to the mass. These observations provide fodder for my thoughts about personality and management at the bottom level of American cooperate. I have some reflections which I think have solid footing: “Love and passion”, “Respect it v.s. want to do it”.

I am grateful that I got to know so many colleagues in 2020. Some became good friends of mine, the friendship helps me a lot to deal with fear, anxiety, and boredom. They have a lot of beautiful stories. I might not be able to put them into my blog right now because of privacy. Once I find the way, they will be the source of inspiration.

Another bonus from work is that I find my passion. I find out I have passion, to be exact. I mentioned it a bit in “It matters”. I had almost a decade of frantic weightlifting training when I was at 30s, leaving me 250lbs or so of weight and countless injuries. My muscle was all gone after I lost the weight, but the injuries stayed. I had back pain and knee sores at the beginning working in the building, but they got through really quickly. I guess the HIIT training in the late years built good endurance. The “political correct” environment assures you that the manager only comes after you for safety and attendance, never for low productivity. You can have easy work if you play around. But I can never do that. I want to do better than yesterday. My time is poor enough per pay, I don’t want to waste it again. Once I get to the line, I forget the surroundings in ten minutes and the energy starts to pump like a workout. In two positions, my working data constantly stays on the top. And thankfully, I realized that it’s the passion, not the old muscle, that keeps me running tirelessly. Love is a performed act, but passion can’t be faked. For many years I don’t know I still have passion. My passion hasn’t materially helped me in my work — this system doesn’t really care. I am too excited about the realization to care about promotion.

Every morning when I log in to my working device — a sort of cell phone, it pops up a list of questions to cheer me up. The top one is always “what’s your job satisfaction?” I give it a smile and click the “moderate”. Why would it matter? It’s my workout, it’s the game against the ME of yesterday, and I walk away with a paycheck. That’s all that matters. I am grateful I have a job throughout 2020, which actually needs me more than ever as the big board signs everywhere say. I have long stopped my job search — tired of hearing “sorry, you are overqualified” at interviews. I have been struggling to find my bearings, and my confidence was fading. Thankfully, Amazon helps me find my passion and restore confidence. in 2020, though it’s not necessarily related to it. Knowing I have it is the most important of all, hopefully, it gives a fresh start for my career.

Self-improvement

Toastmasters club. I determine self-learning is a big part of my life, the career will come after it. For my personal growth in 2020, the biggest thank you goes to Toastmasters. In 2019, I was wondering what TMs was about and what it could do to my life. 2020, before I knew it, TMs became my major connection to the outside world, the world of people. I changed my work shift in April. I had to stop attending the meeting of one club due to time conflict. I quickly joined another club to make up the meeting time. Now I have three club meetings every week, plus random guest meetings. What’s more important than being connected to people in the time of confinement?

So many times felt I would give up, stay in the bunker and let stupor carry me along. So many times I was jolted that a group of people was waiting for me, I had roles to fulfill, I had to get up giving a stupid speech that they would all applaud, via zoom, “Wow~~so much better…look forward to the next one…”

I took my son Jack, 16, with me. Believe me, their world is more crushed than the adults’. Nobody treated him as a minor member. He had roles and duties in every single meeting. I am thrilled to see him grow faster than me. I am not sure his school would teach him these, but here he learned courage, responsibility, wisdom, and ultimately, kindness. Oh~~We never need kindness more than now.

Writing, another gift from Covid-19. I was scared to death when the lockdown started. When Amazon offered the “volunteer staying home” policy in March, I took it immediately and stayed at home for one month. Then I was bored to death, then I started to write. I had constant market writings from 2014 to 2017; my blog at Linkedin built some audience in the industry I worked in. When I wrote for the cooperate, I didn’t have writing blocks as I knew the business so well. There were a lot of routines and subjects that helped me write along. Since I left the industry I soon lost the theme. “Writing is cheap, idea is expensive.” I have been dreaming of picking up writing since moving to SoCal. This covid-19 finally pushed me to the table, I started to try to put my thoughts rather than business into words.

In 2020 I have published 35 posts at my medium blog, including 2 long essays, and 33 short ones. Totally 33000 or so words. So far I have the pace of publishing one article per week. Not a boastful outcome, but the calmness and joy incredibly helped me shield the anxiety and chaos. My Toastmasters speeches help me a lot in writing, too, or vice versa. But I still often have content blocks. I try to figure out my focus, work? story? growth? culture? — trying to grasp everything would end up getting nothing. I have been focused on Chinese food late to keep the writing pace. Ironically, I am not a foodie at all. Telling your story is one thing, telling your passion is another. I need to find my passion for writing before I lose momentum. I haven’t done anything to promote my blog yet, the audience is almost zero, and the few interactions came from offline friends. I think promoting the blog is an idea as far-fetched at this stage — I haven’t figured out what I promote it for. I need to stay with “selfish writing” in 2021. I write for myself. It helps me sit down and process my thoughts. It gives me time that otherwise would be spent on Netflix, youtube, and FB. 2–3 hours of highly concentrating time in the evening is the best gift, honed skills and contents would come as bonus.

Reading. I have much longer reading history, English books, than writing. It stopped altogether with writing in 2017. Again 2020 helped me pick up the reading. I was an early reader and night writer for many years — the beauty of WFH. Now my mornings are mostly occupied by work, so my reading moves pretty slow. So far I have read:

1. Atomic Habits (James Clear) Tiny changes, remarkable results. A great book. I had a review of it at “The compound effects of good habits.”
2. The Economic Passion (Adam Davidson) Not sure I follow the concepts in the book. I am never a business maniac, nor a business visionary. It never bothers me.
3. The end of marketing (Carlos Gil) It seems to be a cooperate textbook. Until I figure out what I am going to do with social media, it’s too early a guide book for me.

Audible books, I finished “The Walden Pond”, “The Da Vinci Code”, “The Lost Symbol”, and “the Life of Pi”. Can’t remember how many times I have listened to these books. When it comes to audible books, fictions are still my favorite. Podcast, if it can be considered as reading, I love “The Tim Ferriss Show”, “The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk”, and “Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard”. Not sure what my reading life would look like without all the fears and lockdowns in 2020. Or it would ever exist at all — the outdoor life of SoCal is full of sunshine and fun. These quiet reading times help me stay calm at the intervals of many routines.

2020 Events. We may never be able to have an annual event list as unanimous as the one of 2020. At least the top three: Covid-19, the U.S. election, and BLM. My fourth pick would be Hong Kong protest. Everybody has her Covid-19 stories in 2020 no matter where she lives. The last event impactful like this is perhaps dated back to WWII. Certainly it will stay with us for a big part of 2021, too. Anyone who can work, write, and read at this moment should be extremely grateful — we are all survivors of 2020. I had a touching base of the U.S. election at “Thank you, America”. But my awakening time didn’t come until after the election date. OMG not only freedom is not free, freedom can be so chaotic. But I gulp the free air like a baby because I am from a cult country. Somebody said, “the worst day in freedom is better than the best day in a cult”. Without Covid, the Hong Kong protest would look a lot different in 2020. Of course this statement applies to any event. But Hong Kong people are my heroes in 2020.

Family

Family is my №1 priority in life. But I deem the online world not a place to share family stories, or not with certain boundaries. My wife has been with her lung cancer stage IV for almost three and a half years now. Every day is a miracle for her and this family. The endless scanning checkups and oncologist visits continued in 2020, whereas the pandemic often hit the headline of her life. She had a heavily infected appendicitis surgery in Sept, partly resulted from the delay of going to the hospital in fear of Covid-19. Fighting cancer for multiple years gives her enough grit to face the virus threat and incidents along the way. As a couple we have deep divisions for many years. She was stuck in the US for 15 months with a visitor’s visa, we had 15 months living together as a complete family. This generated a hugging shield to wade through the turbulence in 2020 and a heaven for our son Jack.

Faith

My biggest regret of 2020 is that I stopped going to Sunday worship, despite that we all need Jesus more than ever. Worship was a big part of my life in 2019, Sunday service, Bible study, and volunteers. I had to work on Sunday morning since April. I can’t afford to choose Jesus over paycheck. Then I stopped going to the Bible studies on Wed. and Fri. that were not time conflicting. I applauded the online service in the beginning, cheering “a new form of worship”. But soon I find myself lost, I lost the sense of gathering. I keep telling myself “The Church of God is ready everywhere”, but I still give way to fear and anxiety. Church brothers and sisters gave me incredible support and care, I believe God never leaves me.

Faith, family, work, and self-learning, altogether bring me calmness, passion, connection, and courage. This is how I survived the perfect storm of 2020